by Cara Bristol
Mr. Uber squinted at his phone. “This isn’t a house; it’s an office building for Antoinette Sutterman, attorney-at-law. I’d wait for you…but I got another fare…” He tapped on his device.
“No, you go on. There’s nothing more you can do anyway.” If my Antoinette Sutterman didn’t live here, I would need to regroup and figure out where else to search.
“Good luck! I hope you find your woman,” he said.
“Thank you.” I slid out of the vehicle onto the curb.
With a wave, he merged into the stream of moving vehicles and disappeared.
I peered up at the tall building and prayed to the Fates. Please let this be the one.
I’d left Dakon with no information other than the name of my mate and her camp—New Los Angeles. To my dismay, her camp turned out to be much larger and more populated than I had expected. I’d had no idea where to begin my search. I couldn’t go to the Intergalactic Dating Agency for help because I wasn’t supposed to be here.
Fortunately, as I’d wandered the streets, the hand of the Fates had guided me to the Stellar Dust Bin, a tavern frequented by extraterrestrials, one of whom happened to be a Dakonian who’d been on Terra for about a year. Rojak used his phone to locate the huts where all the Antoinette Suttermans lived and called Mr. Uber to take me to them.
On my planet, everyone had a unique name. I never considered there could be more than one female named Antoinette Sutterman. Then again, I never imagined a village as large as New Los Angeles. I guessed when a planet had a lot of people, they ran out of names and had to triple up.
I entered the building, stepping into a large cavern with a black-veined white stone floor so smooth my kel boots wanted to slide over the surface. A dozen people milled around conversing in small groups. Standing before a metal door, studying a moving light, were three females. Could one of those be mine? I scrutinized them, but my horns didn’t even twitch.
“Antoinette Sutterman?” I called out anyway.
A man frowned. “The office listing is right in front of you.” He gestured to a board with white scribblings.
I could understand and speak Terran because I’d been implanted with a translator before they’d dragged me off the ship, but I couldn’t read it.
The metal doors where the women waited dinged and opened. One of the females glanced back at me. “Her office is on the eighth floor.”
“Thank you.” Eight floors? I saw only the shiny one I stood on.
“What are you waiting for? I’m holding the elevator for you.” She motioned.
“Will it take me to Antoinette Sutterman?”
“Yes! Come on.”
I ran to join her. The doors closed without anyone doing anything, and I found myself enclosed in a metal box.
The female pushed a couple of buttons. The metal box rose. I grabbed the railing and braced myself. Unconcerned, the females stared at a moving light. Seconds later, the metal box jolted to a stop, and the doors opened.
What now?
“This is your floor,” the helpful female said. “Her office is at the end of the corridor.”
She was a very nice female who would make some male very happy. “Thank you.” I bounded off, relieved to be out of the metal box and eager to find my mate.
As I approached the door at the end of the hall, my horns throbbed. Obah! Excitement and relief washed over me. I had located my female! She lived here. The Fates had guided me, and they were never wrong. Calm confidence filled me.
I opened the door, and the sense of rightness grew stronger. A woman, her dark hair threaded with gray, sat at a large glossy table, peering at one of the ubiquitous lighted screens. Earth people seemed to spend a lot of time watching screens. “Can I help you?” she asked.
I ducked to avoid acquiring another painful knot on my head. Terrans were short, and few of their doorways were tall enough to accommodate my average height. My body signaled my mate was nearby, but I doubted this female was she. I got no sense of recognition. “You’re not Antoinette Sutterman.”
“I’m Megan Nichols, Ms. Sutterman’s assistant. Can I help you?”
Relief she wasn’t the one washed over me. “I’m Aton. I’m here to see Antoinette Sutterman.”
“Do you have an appointment?” She swiveled to her screen.
“No.”
She peered at me over spectacles perched on her nose. “Is she expecting you?”
“Yes, I’m her mate. The Fates have selected her for me, and I’m here to claim her.”
Megan Nichols sprang up. “I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”
“Not until I see her!”
She pressed a button on a device on her table.
“Yes?” came a disembodied male voice.
She kept her gaze on me. “Code fourteen. Suite 804.”
“We’re on the way.”
“Uh, he’s very big and…uh, not human.” She eyed my horns.
“Got it.”
Behind her were two doors, both closed. The one on the left didn’t give off any vibration, but as I leaned to the right, my horns tingled. There! She was behind that door. I stepped toward it.
“Where are you going?” Megan Nichols leaped out and barred my path.
If she’d been a male, I would have shoved her out of the way, but she was female, Terran, and small. I could hurt her without intending to.
“I came to retrieve my female. Antoinette Sutterman!” I shouted. Maybe she would hear and come to me.
“You need to leave,” she said. “Security will be here any minute.”
When I tried to step around her, she moved, too, then the outer door burst open, and three males barreled in.
“Thank god you’re here. He’s ranting and raving, talking crazy, and demanding to see Ms. Sutterman,” Megan Nichols said.
“You need to leave the premises right now.” One of the males aimed a handheld device at me. He motioned to Megan Nichols. “You should move out of the way, ma’am.”
She scooted behind her table, and I rushed at the door on the right. “I’m meeting my mate—”
“Taser! Taser! Taser!” Two darts shot out of the man’s weapon. One bounced off my kel tunic, but the other barb lodged in my neck. Lightning splintered through my body, locking up every muscle in agony. I couldn’t move; I couldn’t speak. I fell face forward onto the hard floor.
Click. Click. Click. Click… With every metallic sounding tick, the barb delivered a streak of torment throughout my entire body. I felt like I was on fire.
“Damn good thing the Taser works on an alien,” said one of the men.
“Christ, yeah, he’s huge,” replied the one who continued to shoot me as I lay tortured and drooling on the floor. I could hear everything, but I couldn’t speak.
“Why did he come here? He asked for Ms. Sutterman,” Megan Nichols said.
“Her name is on the door and on the signage downstairs. He could have targeted her because she’s female,” said the shooter. “Are you sure she doesn’t know him?”
“Absolutely. I keep her schedule. She would have told me if she was expecting someone. She specifically told me this morning she would be on a conference call and not to disturb her.”
She is my mate! I have to get to her!
“There’s been a spike in extraterrestrial immigration in New Los Angeles.” He motioned to the other guards. “Get ready to cuff him.”
When the clicking stopped, so did the pain, but before I could react, two men yanked my arms behind my back, snapped metal rings around my wrists, and dragged me to my feet.
“I can’t thank you enough for coming so quickly,” Megan Nichols said. “What are you going to do with him?”
The men hauled me toward the exit. “If he was a vagrant, we’d release him outside, but seeing how he’s an extraterrestrial who targeted a tenant, we’ll hand him over to the New Los Angeles Police Department and let them call immigration. Most likely,
they’ll deport him to his home planet.”
“No! The Fates meant for us to be together. I came all the way from Dakon. Antoinette Sutterman! Antoinette Sutterman!” I yelled. “It’s me! Aton!” Why couldn’t she hear me? Couldn’t she sense me?
“That’s enough of that, buddy. Don’t make me Taser you again,” the guard snapped.
The door slammed shut as they dragged me away.
Chapter Three
Toni
“Antoinette Sutterman!”
Was someone calling me? I squinted at my closed office door before returning to the call in progress. Whatever was going on out there, Megan would handle it. “My client is prepared to offer five thousand dollars to end this right now. The case is frivolous. You’ll never win.”
“We’ll let the jury decide. Your client’s roof and skylight were unsafe, leading to serious injury. My client broke his femur.”
I rolled my eyes at the ludicrousness of the suit. This was why I didn’t use the picto-phone app for these types of calls. Not being seen freed me to make appropriate facial expressions in response to inappropriate demands. I didn’t let my mockery show in my voice, however. “Your client was in the process of committing a crime. He scaled the roof with the intention of breaking into a jewelry shop and burglarizing it, and in the process fell through the skylight.”
“That has not been proven.”
More voices filtered through from outside. I pressed the receiver harder against my right ear and covered my left to muffle the noise. “Your client is serving jail time for burglary!”
“Not pertinent to this case.”
While free on bail for another burglary, my opposing counsel’s client had attempted to rob my client’s place of business. He’d since been convicted of the other charges but had filed a five-million-dollar personal injury suit against my client for lost wages and emotional distress. I assumed the lost wages came from his inability to rob anyone else while hobbling on crutches.
Since injury had prevented him from actually burglarizing the jewelry store, he’d only been arrested for breaking and entering. The criminal trial on the B&E started next week. “It would behoove your client to accept our generous offer before his conviction.”
A conviction for breaking and entering decreased the odds of winning the civil case. On the other hand, if the jury acquitted him—unlikely, but possible—he stood a better chance of winning a civil judgment. While a reasonable person would find his lawsuit specious, juries had awarded judgments to a woman who’d been hit in the eye at a restaurant where wait staff tossed dinner rolls to diners, and to a thief who’d gotten run over while trying to steal the hubcaps off a car.
“The roof was unsafe,” the attorney said. “I have the inspection report from the roofing company.”
That was the one thing that could hurt our defense. Unbeknownst to my client, termites, quite common in New California, had eaten through the wooden trusses. When the burglar had attempted to lower himself through the skylight on a rope, the roof had given way. Unfortunately, my client hadn’t had a termite inspection in twenty years.
“Taser! Taser! Taser!”
Taser? What the hell was going on out there?
Thump! It sounded like something heavy hit the floor.
“He shouldn’t have been on the roof,” I said. “A skylight is not an egress.”
“Was it posted UNSAFE ROOF—KEEP OFF?”
“Ridiculous. Nobody posts warning notices on their roofs.” If a warning had been posted, counsel would have argued negligence, claiming my client knew the roof was dangerous but failed to act on it.
“Antoinette Sutterman! Antoinette Sutterman! It’s me! Tom!”
Tom? I didn’t know any Tom. Or Dick or Harry. And anybody who knew me well called me Toni.
Blah, blah, blah… The attorney with the scumbag client was saying something. I forced myself to concentrate. “What was that?”
“I said what’s ridiculous is your paltry five-thousand-dollar offer. We’ll see you in court.”
“Fine. See you there.” I’d get with my client and suggest he up his offer a tad to make the nuisance go away. He hadn’t wanted to offer anything. In truth, if the case went to court, it would go down in the annals as one of the stupidest lawsuits in history. Despite the termites, if I couldn’t win this one, I shouldn’t be practicing law. But, my client would spend big bucks in fees fighting it.
I hung up the phone and stalked out to the reception area.
Looking ruffled and out of sorts, my assistant sat at her desk.
“Megan, what’s going on out here? You knew I had a call…” I kept my voice level to avoid showing how ticked off I was.
“I’m sorry, Toni. Some crazy stormed in. Security had to Taser him to subdue him.”
Irritation evaporated. “Are you all right?” I pressed a hand to my throat. “He didn’t hurt you, did he?” I felt guilty now for getting pissed off, when she’d been protecting me.
“No. I’m fine.” She shook her head. “I’m a little jittery, but it’s the reaction setting in. Security came right away.” She gave a nervous giggle. “I can’t believe I barred the way to prevent him from going into your office. He could have snapped me like a twig. They Tasered him for like half a minute, and then it took three of them to haul him out of here. The guy was huge! He had to be at least seven feet tall, and he had shoulders as wide as a freakin’ tank. I’ve never seen anybody that big—but then I’ve never seen an alien up close and personal.”
“What—wait? Alien? Like an extraterrestrial?”
“Yeah. He had horns.” She put her index fingers to her forehead. “Not big ones, but they were horns. He wasn’t unattractive for an extraterrestrial, but he was belligerent and scary. He kept shouting your name and insisting you were his mate.”
Had the Intergalactic Dating Agency found a match for me? Nobody had notified me. The IDA seemed to run a pretty sloppy ship—match, no match, match? On the other hand, maybe it was a coincidence—a random alien could have wandered into my office…on the eighth floor. “Did he speak English? Did he say anything?”
“Only that he was from planet Dakon and he was going to”—she mimed air quotes— “claim you.”
I pressed a hand to my racing heart. “Did he give a name?”
She shrugged. “Yeah—Aton.”
Not Tom. Aton.
Aton had arrived, and my assistant had had him Tasered! I hadn’t told anyone but my sister I’d signed up with the Intergalactic Dating Agency. I’d planned to hold off on any announcements until something definite happened. “Oh my god—where is he now?”
“In the security office, I guess. They were going to call the NLAPD and turn him over to immigration—”
I dashed from the office. The damn elevator was stuck on the twelfth floor, so I ran for the stairs. Sprinting seven flights in a pencil skirt and heels, I prayed I wouldn’t break my neck. I arrived in the lobby breathless but in one piece.
I located the office by the large one-way mirrored windows preventing people from seeing inside and by SECURITY stenciled in gold on the door.
Three uniformed officers watched a bank of computer screens flashing camera footage of the building’s hallways, two others faced each other across back-to-back desks, and one handsome-as-sin Dakonian sat handcuffed to a chair.
“Aton?” This wasn’t how I’d expected to meet my match.
“Yes! Antoinette Sutterman!” He stood, taking the chair with him.
An officer leaped up and shoved him back down. “I didn’t say you could move!”
“Release this man. You have no cause to hold him,” I said.
“Megan Nichols reported a disturbance—”
“Megan works for me. I forgot to tell her I was expecting Aton. I’m sorry. The request for security was a misunderstanding.”
“He refused to follow directions.”
“He’s unfamiliar with Earth ways. I’ll take
full responsibility for him.”
We engaged in a visual standoff, and then the security officer shrugged. “Uncuff him.”
Another guard rummaged through a drawer for the keys.
Aton and I gazed at each other. So dark, his brown eyes appeared almost pupil-less, but they flashed with fire. Shoulder-length hair as glossy and black as obsidian swept back from a high, broad forehead. Small, leathery protrusions stuck out behind his hairline. As our eyes locked, the horns swelled and pulsed. My heartbeat quickened, and heat crawled up my neck. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d blushed!
Feeling fluttery and nervous, I averted my gaze. “Did you call the NLAPD?” I asked the officers.
“Yes.”
“Cancel it.”
The officer made a disapproving face but nodded to one of his colleagues and sighed.
I’d spoiled their fun. Their jobs entailed staring out the window at the lobby, watching vids of people searching for offices, managing lost and found, and occasionally running a vagrant or drunk off the property. Today, they’d gotten to Taser an alien. It had been an exciting day for them.
The guard found the keys, undid the cuffs, and Aton sprang up.
Megan hadn’t been kidding when she said he was huge. He towered over me by more than a foot, and I topped six feet in my heels. Having to crane my neck to meet his eyes made me feel tiny.
From a distance, he could be mistaken for a person of African or Indian descent, but up close the other-worldly bronze sheen to his mocha skin disabused that assumption. Humanoid, yes, but with his unusual coloring and horns, he left no doubt he was an extraterrestrial.
Not to mention inhumanly sexy.
“Are you all right?” I asked. They’d shocked him. The neuromuscular incapacitation and pain lasted only as long as a person was Tasered, but who knew the effect the electrical jolts could have on a Dakonian?
“I’m fine, now.” His nostrils flared, and his horns twitched again. “Antoinette Sutterman.” My name in his gravelly, accented voice caused heat to rush to my face.
